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THE NEGRO

were enkindled between the tribes of the coast and the tribes of the interior. Notwithstanding all this and the hundreds of slaves captured, the supply by no means yet met the demand.

Captain Canot describes one of these raids in the following words: — "In my wanderings in Africa I have often seen the tiger pounce upon its prey, and with instinctive thirst satiate its appetite for blood and abandon the drained corpse ; but these African negresses [who were of the raiding party] were neither as decent nor as merciful as the beast of the wilderness. Their malignant pleasure seemed to consist in the invention of tortures that would agonize but not slay. A slow, lingering tormenting mutilation was practised on the living, * * * and in every instance the brutality of the women exceeded that of the men. I cannot picture their hellish joy, * * * while the queen of the harpies crept amid the butchery gathering the brains from each severed skull as a bonne bonche for the approaching feast."

Those that were captured alive were sold on the coast, and the stories of these raids undoubtedly amused the American colonists when they were recited to them on the return home of the slavers. History goes to show that the United States was, at the time, quite familiar with all of these outrages.

English slavers were quite as bad in such matters, as evinced by the chapter of treachery and murder done in 1767 on the slave-ships Indian Queen, Duke of York, Nancy, and the Concord, when they were up one of the rivers on the slave-coast. Scores of negroes were induced to come aboard these four vessels for a pow-wow. After they were made nearly crazy with rum,